National Identity

I have been working on a digital poster for my nationalism course. There is the endless search for images, audio/video clips and the appropriate text to fit a small space of no more than an A4 size sheet of paper. And then there is the search for an identity that I have constructed and deconstructed time and again. How do you outgrow or shed the conditioning of nationalism or even religion. I bring in religion because national identity in Pakistan is intertwined with religion. Why? Because we think the nation was created in the name of religion.

Correction: Pakistan was created to be a country for Muslims of India and not Islam. There is a difference: a difference we often fail to see, a difference that matters and a difference that makes all the difference sometimes.

I wonder why no history text book in the land of the pure ever quotes Jinnah's first address to the Constituent Assembly.

'You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.'

But then it really does not take a lot of wondering. Our national identity is socially constructed and we grow up conditioned in to it. Hence, we think ourselves nationals of a great nation and associate our blood and belonging with a piece of land: a piece of land no different from any other piece of land. We hold sacred our map, flag, 'founding fathers' and monuments. Never realizing that they are just symbols and people long dead and these symbols are no different than symbols held esteemed by people across the globe. We live our lives divided as nations: people who would rather be part of a great nation than being plain simple human beings.